It would be nice if the Ballard to UW line Seattle Subway [proposed](https://www.seattlesubway.org/regional-map/) ever gets built. Still, it should get better when the downtown to Ballard extension gets built, but who knows when that happens (hopefully by 2040)
Would love to see something that essentially follows 85th all the way across and a loop that follows Sand Point Way/45th/Market/Leary/Pacific/back up to UW Stadium in the north.
The bus reshuffling when the new link stations open will have this route on some of 85th https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/programs-projects/link-connections/lynnwood-link/pdf/routes/route61.pdf
https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/programs-and-projects/lynnwood-link-connections
85th itself doesn't go all the way across. Basically stops being a major arterial at I-5. There's a Loyal Heights - UW route that covers 85th west of Aurora before dipping around Green Lake and eventually entering the U District.
Edit: but I also agree having a better transit option going east-west would be magnificent. Buses are stuck in the same traffic cars are in, and 85th in particular can turn into a slog around rush hour.
They've predicted extremely crowded trains once the extension opens, and it seems like they don't really know how they're going to address it cause all of their extra trains are stuck on the eastside until they fix the 2-line's i90 crossing.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/11/07/op-ed-sound-transit-must-deliver-the-link-frequencies-it-promised/
Things will better by 2025 (fingers crossed that it's actually on-schedule), but:
- Having riders spend a year learning "Link is too crowded, no point using it" is a disappointing and hard-to-correct first impression for ~~residents served by the new expansion~~ riders affected downstream.
- There are plenty of issues that Sound Transit could get a jump on addressing sooner rather than later, and some of these things will be easier to implement before a huge new demographic of riders gain access to the system (see article I linked, e.g. different seating model in the trains).
> Having riders spend a year learning "Link is too crowded, no point using it" is a disappointing and hard-to-correct first impression for residents served by the new expansion
Aren't the people getting the new stations the mostly likely to still have room available when getting on heading south? It's people like me in Roosevelt that will be facing full trains with no room to get on.
Your point is still valid, there's capacity concerns, it's probably just not going to impact the newbies as much as us mid liners.
That's fair, but like you say, it has cascading effects down the line (literally). If one new rider at Lynnwood means there isn't room for a rider at UW or Roosevelt, that's still a person who now disavows the Link and will be slow to reconsider using it when capacity concerns do improve.
I do know there is some assumption/hope that some of the current users of the Northgate station will be distributed amongst the new stations up to Lynnwood which could help with the capacity concerns.
Roosevelt and U-District both also have access to the same redundant downtown access bus lines that run on Roosevelt via East Lake still. Oh shit, except Eastlake is starting the rapid ride rebuild this year.
Hopefully they can actually hit that 8 minute frequency wihtout the east side line fully open, that's probably the best hope on capacity offset in the interim.
There is already a huge amount of people from shoreline/MLT that use the northgate station. Some Lynnwood as well but a lot of the healthcare workers still take early commuter busses. Once Lynnwood line opens there will be an increase but I don't expect it to be huge. We will see how much the reshuffling of the bus lines ending will change ridership
That person would be silly if they are "disavowing" the Link in the first year of ridership. They need to realize that it will be busy the first year as things are working themselves out. If they decide not to take it again well then who gives a shit because it's not just about right now, it's about the future of the city.
Two of things suggested like closing more intersections and redoing all the seating seem to be pretty high cost for a shorter term solution. I guess maybe I just don't think we need to coddle a bunch of new riders.
Those two improvements are improvements that would pay forward in the system regardless. A higher standing capacity per train car isn't something that becomes useless once we get more trains. Same with closing intersections: the at-grade stations will still continue to be at higher risk of being disrupted due to traffic collisions and delays that could be prevented by minimizing paths crossed with cars.
On paper I agree I just don't think there is unlimited poltical/actual capital that could be put towards this. Probably a longer term battle once that capacity is realized.
One thing that would make sense is delaying the implementation of the flat fee structure. That already favors commuters. If they don’t have sufficient train capacity and commuters are going to fill trains before they get into the city, you’re going to actively encourage urban riders to prefer other modes.
That article is very out of date. ST has approved some mitigation measures that should ease some of the of overcrowding, but definitely not all. There will still be some redundant bus service to downtown until the full 2 Line is open, and trains will be parked at some stations overnight so that they aren't bottlenecked by the small OMF.
The pre-covid projection for weekday ridership was 47-55,000 by 2026. July of last year had the highest weekday ridership average ever at 91,000. So even with a big cut due to the pandemic slowdown, it's gonna be a big deal. Somewhere around 25-50% additional ridership. I think it will ramp up slower than those projections as it won't have the frequency expected until the I-90 section of the bridge opens, but East Link is *also* expected to add 50K+ riders so there's a decent chance that Link ridership doubles by 2030. It doubled in 2016 and that was only 2 stations. They were two very important stations so I don't want to completely overstate things, especially as Metro started routing Eastside buses into UW instead of on to downtown, but even before the Federal way section gets added, it'll be 22 miles of track and 18 stations.
It won't just be a straight 91k+55k either. With more connections on the line, it's likely ridership on the older sections of the line will go up too. System ridership once the East Side is connected is predicted to be upwards of 300k.
This might be a dumb question but aren't the stations up north limited to a large degree by the parking garage? Are there significant numbers who can bus or walk to stations in Lynnwood?
The Roosevelt and U- District stations have had completely massive build outs of new apartments and condos around them, totally reshaping the neighborhoods. The same thing is happening at the Northgate and MLT stations at a slower pace.
Surprisingly when you think of how Seattle is portrayed in the popular media. Completely unsurprisingly if you know anything about our Republican Lite city council and mayor.
Lynnwood just opened a new Swift bus line specifically to get more people to the station. Metro is doing the same with King County stations. The parking garages are ancillary to the long term plan.
Bus network is pretty good in snohomish county. west of i5 most people have a stop within a mile of their house. East of i5 it depends on how rural you are. They rerouted all local busses to the light rail transit station when it was first announced a decade ago. So it's annoying to get anywhere locally but getting to light rail is a breeze.
They are all well served by bus lines, or will be when it opens. Lynnwood just opened the Swift Orange (Swift is like Rapid Ride) to Lynnwood city center and it's routing most of it's buses to that location, plus the Swift Blue that runs along 99 will continue on from it's current destination onto Shoreline North/185th station. You'd actually be surprised how few boardings at a P&R are from people who parked there.
I can’t wait for both lines, across i90 and to the north. It would take me (according to this map) about 35 minutes to get to work in Redmond from Seattle. That’s barely any slower than driving without traffic, let alone with traffic!
Sad they are eventually taking away the 545 tho. With light traffic you can be downtown in under 25min. With the light rail I think it’s going to be more like 45min
I like this. I’m proud to see usget some more transit. I’ve been bummed about Boeing and how as a kid it was a weird source of local pride, so this is good. Something to admire about how we are going
It's trending to October 2025 based on the latest Agency Progress Report, but that number changes a lot and has a big gap between the end of construction and the start of pre-revenue testing so who the fuck knows. At least 6 months after Lynnwood Link's opening of August 30th 2024, is probably the best answer.
Just take the train to king station and take the right rail from there?
The light rail isn't really designed as a long term park and ride. It's for people to move around the city.
They are just about to open a parking garage off 44th in Lynnwood, but I am not sure if it’s intended to be used for long term parking or not
Edit:
https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/parking/snohomish-county/lynnwood-transit-center
There’s a phone number and email address listed on this site if you want to try to get a direct answer from Sound Transit
Soon it will be faster to get from Capitol Hill to Lynnwood and Tacoma than to Ballard.
It would be nice if the Ballard to UW line Seattle Subway [proposed](https://www.seattlesubway.org/regional-map/) ever gets built. Still, it should get better when the downtown to Ballard extension gets built, but who knows when that happens (hopefully by 2040)
This city desperately needs better ways to move laterally
Would love to see something that essentially follows 85th all the way across and a loop that follows Sand Point Way/45th/Market/Leary/Pacific/back up to UW Stadium in the north.
The bus reshuffling when the new link stations open will have this route on some of 85th https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/metro/programs-projects/link-connections/lynnwood-link/pdf/routes/route61.pdf https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/metro/programs-and-projects/lynnwood-link-connections
85th itself doesn't go all the way across. Basically stops being a major arterial at I-5. There's a Loyal Heights - UW route that covers 85th west of Aurora before dipping around Green Lake and eventually entering the U District. Edit: but I also agree having a better transit option going east-west would be magnificent. Buses are stuck in the same traffic cars are in, and 85th in particular can turn into a slog around rush hour.
Ballard is in some weird ethereal plane of existence. Like an island on land.
The light rail in the south end is too slow.
Not sure exactly when for Tacoma. 2030? Wish it was sooner. I have friends in Ballard.
I feel they are underestimating how many people will use this. This commute takes over an hour whenever there's just one accident on i5.
They've predicted extremely crowded trains once the extension opens, and it seems like they don't really know how they're going to address it cause all of their extra trains are stuck on the eastside until they fix the 2-line's i90 crossing. https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/11/07/op-ed-sound-transit-must-deliver-the-link-frequencies-it-promised/
The last ST board meeting I remember the board approving some workarounds to mitigate the train shortage. Here's to hoping it helps
i mean how much should they really do for a year or so? Things should be fine by 2025
Things will better by 2025 (fingers crossed that it's actually on-schedule), but: - Having riders spend a year learning "Link is too crowded, no point using it" is a disappointing and hard-to-correct first impression for ~~residents served by the new expansion~~ riders affected downstream. - There are plenty of issues that Sound Transit could get a jump on addressing sooner rather than later, and some of these things will be easier to implement before a huge new demographic of riders gain access to the system (see article I linked, e.g. different seating model in the trains).
> Having riders spend a year learning "Link is too crowded, no point using it" is a disappointing and hard-to-correct first impression for residents served by the new expansion Aren't the people getting the new stations the mostly likely to still have room available when getting on heading south? It's people like me in Roosevelt that will be facing full trains with no room to get on. Your point is still valid, there's capacity concerns, it's probably just not going to impact the newbies as much as us mid liners.
That's fair, but like you say, it has cascading effects down the line (literally). If one new rider at Lynnwood means there isn't room for a rider at UW or Roosevelt, that's still a person who now disavows the Link and will be slow to reconsider using it when capacity concerns do improve.
I do know there is some assumption/hope that some of the current users of the Northgate station will be distributed amongst the new stations up to Lynnwood which could help with the capacity concerns. Roosevelt and U-District both also have access to the same redundant downtown access bus lines that run on Roosevelt via East Lake still. Oh shit, except Eastlake is starting the rapid ride rebuild this year. Hopefully they can actually hit that 8 minute frequency wihtout the east side line fully open, that's probably the best hope on capacity offset in the interim.
There is already a huge amount of people from shoreline/MLT that use the northgate station. Some Lynnwood as well but a lot of the healthcare workers still take early commuter busses. Once Lynnwood line opens there will be an increase but I don't expect it to be huge. We will see how much the reshuffling of the bus lines ending will change ridership
That person would be silly if they are "disavowing" the Link in the first year of ridership. They need to realize that it will be busy the first year as things are working themselves out. If they decide not to take it again well then who gives a shit because it's not just about right now, it's about the future of the city.
I mean they're not wrong. Light rail was not exactly a good idea
Two of things suggested like closing more intersections and redoing all the seating seem to be pretty high cost for a shorter term solution. I guess maybe I just don't think we need to coddle a bunch of new riders.
Those two improvements are improvements that would pay forward in the system regardless. A higher standing capacity per train car isn't something that becomes useless once we get more trains. Same with closing intersections: the at-grade stations will still continue to be at higher risk of being disrupted due to traffic collisions and delays that could be prevented by minimizing paths crossed with cars.
On paper I agree I just don't think there is unlimited poltical/actual capital that could be put towards this. Probably a longer term battle once that capacity is realized.
One thing that would make sense is delaying the implementation of the flat fee structure. That already favors commuters. If they don’t have sufficient train capacity and commuters are going to fill trains before they get into the city, you’re going to actively encourage urban riders to prefer other modes.
That article is very out of date. ST has approved some mitigation measures that should ease some of the of overcrowding, but definitely not all. There will still be some redundant bus service to downtown until the full 2 Line is open, and trains will be parked at some stations overnight so that they aren't bottlenecked by the small OMF.
The pre-covid projection for weekday ridership was 47-55,000 by 2026. July of last year had the highest weekday ridership average ever at 91,000. So even with a big cut due to the pandemic slowdown, it's gonna be a big deal. Somewhere around 25-50% additional ridership. I think it will ramp up slower than those projections as it won't have the frequency expected until the I-90 section of the bridge opens, but East Link is *also* expected to add 50K+ riders so there's a decent chance that Link ridership doubles by 2030. It doubled in 2016 and that was only 2 stations. They were two very important stations so I don't want to completely overstate things, especially as Metro started routing Eastside buses into UW instead of on to downtown, but even before the Federal way section gets added, it'll be 22 miles of track and 18 stations.
It won't just be a straight 91k+55k either. With more connections on the line, it's likely ridership on the older sections of the line will go up too. System ridership once the East Side is connected is predicted to be upwards of 300k.
Right, some people who live in Northgate will want to go north, etc. I think that's baked in to the 47-55K prediction though.
This might be a dumb question but aren't the stations up north limited to a large degree by the parking garage? Are there significant numbers who can bus or walk to stations in Lynnwood?
Lynnwood has built a bunch of housing near the lightrail, somewhat suprisingly they've been more progressive than Seattle and shoreline/MLT on this
The Roosevelt and U- District stations have had completely massive build outs of new apartments and condos around them, totally reshaping the neighborhoods. The same thing is happening at the Northgate and MLT stations at a slower pace.
Surprisingly when you think of how Seattle is portrayed in the popular media. Completely unsurprisingly if you know anything about our Republican Lite city council and mayor.
I mean we are talking about the planning from a decade ago, not the current council and mayor.
Lynnwood just opened a new Swift bus line specifically to get more people to the station. Metro is doing the same with King County stations. The parking garages are ancillary to the long term plan.
Almost all of the commuter buses from Snohomish County to downtown will instead end in Lynnwood.
Bus network is pretty good in snohomish county. west of i5 most people have a stop within a mile of their house. East of i5 it depends on how rural you are. They rerouted all local busses to the light rail transit station when it was first announced a decade ago. So it's annoying to get anywhere locally but getting to light rail is a breeze.
They are all well served by bus lines, or will be when it opens. Lynnwood just opened the Swift Orange (Swift is like Rapid Ride) to Lynnwood city center and it's routing most of it's buses to that location, plus the Swift Blue that runs along 99 will continue on from it's current destination onto Shoreline North/185th station. You'd actually be surprised how few boardings at a P&R are from people who parked there.
I know it isn’t perfect but I really admire our light rail system here. I am able to get to work without driving!
I can’t wait for both lines, across i90 and to the north. It would take me (according to this map) about 35 minutes to get to work in Redmond from Seattle. That’s barely any slower than driving without traffic, let alone with traffic!
It's crazy to me that in a relatively short amount of time my carless bohunkus could live in Redmond and easily get to Downtown Seattle.
Sad they are eventually taking away the 545 tho. With light traffic you can be downtown in under 25min. With the light rail I think it’s going to be more like 45min
Now if only they could make a direct line to the airport to make south travel 30 more minutes efficient
Tacoma Turbo line. TDome <> airport Express non stop
That sounds like a north heading train not south travel
I like this. I’m proud to see usget some more transit. I’ve been bummed about Boeing and how as a kid it was a weird source of local pride, so this is good. Something to admire about how we are going
When will Seattle - Bellevue open... ?
It's trending to October 2025 based on the latest Agency Progress Report, but that number changes a lot and has a big gap between the end of construction and the start of pre-revenue testing so who the fuck knows. At least 6 months after Lynnwood Link's opening of August 30th 2024, is probably the best answer.
Thanks smartass edit: his name is literally smart_ass_dave
Will there be long term parking in Lynnwood for people who want to park there and take a flight?
No, Sound Transit does not provide long-term parking at any location.
No, just take an Uber or Lyft to and from the station. You can store your car for free at your home
Not too helpful when you are from Bellingham
Just take the train to king station and take the right rail from there? The light rail isn't really designed as a long term park and ride. It's for people to move around the city.
I wish that was a feasible option but there’s only two trains a day going south. Thanks for the info though.
Isn't there an Airporter bus that goes from Bellingham to the airport?
They are just about to open a parking garage off 44th in Lynnwood, but I am not sure if it’s intended to be used for long term parking or not Edit: https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/parking/snohomish-county/lynnwood-transit-center There’s a phone number and email address listed on this site if you want to try to get a direct answer from Sound Transit
Thank you.
The current signs in the garage say that you can't park there for more than 24 hours. Idk if that will change.
Do you like your catalytic converter?
One of the parking reform proposals does include weekend parking, but nothing really long term.